We went.

If you read the previous post and were wondering if we went to Nevada and California, we did.

And we went to Manzanar National Historic Site, as mentioned.

Melvin and I met in Las Vegas. While taxiing to my gate, I spotted one of the Boeing 737-600s operated by AECOM on behalf of the United States Air Force to shuttle military and government employees and consultants to certain special access program facilities, including Area 51 and the Tonopah Test Range.

Boeing 737 operating under the call sign of "Janet"

It's not every day that you see an open secret out in the open.

As I said, we met in Vegas, specifically at the rental car counter, and we hopped into our Manager's Special and hit the road, stopping first at Naked City Pizza. To our surprise, the mural oasis at Prizm Outlets, just east of the California border, was much more interesting than Ugo Rondinone's land art, Seven Magic Mountains, which we have wanted to see since it was created in 2016.

Scott Marsh

Back in town, we checked into the Downtowner, one of the individual projects of the late Tony Hsieh's $350M Downtown Project (DTP). Hsieh was a fan of Burning Man and we visited a couple of the artworks he brought from the annual desert gathering, Big Rig Jig and the The Mantis, to East Fremont Street.

Both are on Atlas Obscura, as are the last remaining Sigma Derby machine; the Hand of Faith gold nugget, from which the Golden Nugget Casino takes its name; and a section of the Berlin Wall in a bathroom at the Main Street Station Hotel and Casino. We were very efficient.

Johnson's J-Bar-B Stables

We then drove to Summerlin to see the Las Vegas Aviators, stopping at Johnson's J-Bar-B Stables, a hybrid if you will of Howard Finster's Paradise Gardens and Casa de Azucar in El Paso. The Aviators -- who we saw with Norton at Cashman Field in 2011, then playing as the Area 51s -- bested the Sacramento River Cats, 8-7. It took 11 innings but we boycotted the zombie runners.

After breakfast at PublicUs, we hit the road. It was a long day of driving but that did not prevent us from making several rewarding stops:

• Goldwell Open Air Museum
• Tom Kelly Bottle House

Tom Kelly Bottle House

• the ghost town of Rhyolite
• Museum of Western Film History
• Manzanar National Historic Site
• Mercado Mexico in Bishop for supper, and
• a brief stop (no tufa) at Mono Lake

(It should be mentioned that neither were we deterred when the brakes and steering started to malfunction on the "Manager's Special" as we crossed Death Valley. After the fact, it's a funny story, really a cliche, but at the time it was stressful.)

It was after dark when we checked into the Travelodge in Hawthorne, Nevada, that is affiliated with the El Capitan Casino. (It may be "THE hot spot between Reno and Las Vegas" but perhaps for lack of competition.) The desk clerk made an incorrect assumption about Melvin and my sexual preference and relationship but she had only the best intentions, which was not the case in Valley Head, Alabama, in 2007.

We continued on like this for another eight days, traveling from the desert to the Bay Area (or the San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley Metropolitan Statistical Area, if you go in for that kind of language). In total, we saw two major league teams, three Triple-A ball clubs, and three California League franchises licensees, which had been demoted from High-A to Low-A when affiliated baseball reorganized.

Remembering Dennis Eckersley at the Oakland Coliseum

The trip had its disappointments -- hello, volunteer staff at the Folsom Prison Museum -- and the usual frustrations but the itinerary was worth the wait and an outstanding post-Covid (so to speak) return to the baseball byways.